Monthly Archive for October, 2008

: October, 2008

When Robert Rauschenberg smeared oil paint on the face of a stuffed goat in 1955, a piece (“Monogram”) that expressed nothing less than a revolution in formal invention, animals did not loom large in the art consciousness of the era. …

As Arctic ice melts under their paws, polar bears are emblems of a warming world. Steven Kazlowski’s 40 large format photos are intimate without mispresenting his subject as cute. Fierce but fun loving, these bears are white on white in white except after eating a seal, when red rings their mouths. Caught on the move, their shaggy bulk appears to float. …

Caught, tossed and gored by historical forces beyond control or prediction, Dirk Park and Jacques Chartier hired a PR firm to give art critics somewhere to go other than direct to Park and Chartier’s cell phones. …

Mandy Greer, from “Silvering Path” Featuring dancer Haruko Nishimura of the Degenerate Art Ensemble, artists Colin Ernst and Mandy Greer as well as filmmaker Ian Lucero, “Silvering Path” sold out last weekend and added an extra night. If Sunday’s when you let yourself go places, you’re in luck. Details with links here. …

There’s no end to the requests artists get to donate their work to auctions to benefit nonprofits. After two decades of ponying up, Seattle painter Juan Alonso decided to go with no. The form letter he sends as his reply is already in hot rotation in his e-mail. …

When I met Joseph Goldberg in Seattle in the late 1970s, he shared a basement apartment in lower Queen Anne with a girlfriend, long gone. The window looked up onto the pavement. The view was weedy clumps with feet walking by. …